Are mainline churches anti-Semitic?

A new report documenting a strong bias against Israel suggests mainline Protestant churches could be partly motivated by anti-Semitism.

The Institute on Religion and Democracy, a monitor of the mainline denominations, says that of the 197 human-rights criticisms issued by the churches between 2000 and 2003, only 31 percent were aimed at countries other than the United States or Israel.

About 37 percent of the statements criticized Israel while 31 percent were directed at the United States.

“Great attention to the United States may be expected from churches that find their homes there,” the report says. “But the dramatic focus on Israel as opposed to many more repressive regimes, including other U.S. allies known for human rights abuses (such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt), must be challenged.”

The churches in the survey [pdf file] include the Presbyterian Church (USA), Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the umbrella bodies, the National Council of Churches and parent World Council of Churches.

As WorldNetDaily reported in July, the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to divest from Israel, making it the largest organization or institution to join the campaign against the Jewish state. The Episcopal Church is considering a similar measure.

Diane Knippers, president of the IRD, contends an “extreme focus on Israel, while ignoring major human rights violators, seriously distorts the churches’ message on universal human rights.”

“We cannot find a rational explanation for the imbalance,” she said in a statement. “We are forced to ask: Is there an anti-Jewish animus, conscious or unconscious, that drives this drumbeat of criticism against the world’s only Jewish state?”

The report says, “Given the dramatic unwillingness of the mainline churches to criticize states around Israel for their human rights abuses – not only the connections to worldwide terrorism, but also the oppression and brutality toward their own people – it is not unreasonable to ask whether anti-Jewish animus may play some role in the churches’ skewed human rights advocacy.”

Using a system by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, the report says only 19 percent of criticisms were leveled at countries classified as “not free.”

Freedom House rates each nation [pdf file] on a scale of one to seven for political rights and civil liberties. It then combines those two ratings and places each nation into one of three categories – “free,” ” partly free” or “not free.”

The IRD report says, “Many of the countries rated lowest by Freedom House – such as China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia – were not criticized even once. Of the 15 worst human rights abusers listed by Freedom House, only five received any criticism during the four years studied.”

It is especially telling, the report says, that amid the Second Intifada, or uprising, “not a single criticism was made of the Palestinian Authority by any of the churches or ecumenical bodies analyzed.”

The churches criticized the United States for its foreign policy – particularly sanctions against Cuba and Iraq, abuses under the USA Patriot Act and domestic human rights abuses against illegal immigrants. Israel was chastised for its treatment of Palestinians, particularly its border policies with Gaza and the West Bank, and incursions into the disputed territories to root out terrorists.

‘Fatally flawed’

The National Council of Churches, or NCC, responded to the IRD report, calling it “fatally flawed.”

“The report assumes that all that the National Council of Churches USA does or says about human rights gets reported out in resolutions and news releases,” the NCC said in a statement. “It ignores the NCC’s sound, comprehensive policy base on human rights.”

But IRD maintains the NCC for decades has pushed a left-wing secular agenda, noting in the report’s introduction that in the 1970s and 1980s the mainline churches “made the mistake of supporting oppressive Soviet-sponsored liberation movements around the world.”

Former NCC General Secretary Joan Brown Campbell confessed in 1993: “We did not under?stand the depth of the suffering of Christians under communism. And we failed to really cry out under the communist oppression.”

The IRD report asserts the lesson has not been learned.

“It appears that mainline denominations may be making the same mistake today with the Arab and Muslim worlds, ignoring many of the most serious abuses while apparently laying heavy blame upon the United States and Israel not only for their own lesser abuses, but also for the abuses of others.”

The tone and language of the mainline churches’ criticisms, the report says, convey the belief that the United States “is often a malignant influence in the world.”

“This pervasive anti-Americanism is demonstrated time and again in their public policy advocacy, and one need not investigate far to find it.”

The NCC contends, however, the IRD report is biased.

“The ideologically conservative IRD cannot claim to have produced an objective report, having among other things used another ideologically conservative group, Freedom House, as its barometer on human rights.”

Freedom House’s list of “not free” nations, however, includes many that are widely regarded as human-rights abusers.

Exploring motives

The IRD, which has considerable experience observing mainline human-rights discussions, probes possible explanations for the churches’ approach.

Noting that it is “notoriously difficult and even risky to judge motives for biased behavior,” the report says, nevertheless, “this may be necessary for correction to happen.”

One explanation is that the disproportionate criticisms of Israel and the U.S. stem from holding them a higher moral standard that judges infractions that might be overlooked in other nations. But the report says if mainline church officials believe this, “they have kept that thought well out of view.”

“If church leaders were consciously employing a double standard, they would be under a moral obligation to reveal it,” the report says.

“Solidarity with church partners” is raised as another explanation. Some officials have said they are aware of human rights abuses in many countries but speak against them only when prompted by partner churches in those countries.

Applying that premise to Israel, the report says, “It is true that many Arab Christians share the grievances of their Muslim compatriots against Israel. But there are also other Christians in Israel and the West Bank who have made their peace with the Jewish state, and who have no appetite for further attacks on it. Here in the Middle East, as elsewhere, the church is not monolithic.”

The IRD points out many Nigerian Christians “have loudly protested against attempts to impose Islamic law in several states of northern Nigeria. But their protests have so far found little echo in U.S. churches.”

Multiculturalism and “values relativism” is another explanation the report offers.

“Many dictators excuse themselves by arguing that their cultures have different understandings of human rights, which place less value on ‘bourgeois’ or ‘Western’ notions such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” the report says. “They dismiss critics as intellectual aggressors who are seeking to impose a ‘Euro-centric’ model upon defenseless Africans and Asians.”

The IRD says, “These seductive apologies for tyranny may find a receptive audience among mainline church leaders who already assume that all values are relative and all cultures morally equivalent.”

The report continues, “Without a strong sense of absolute moral standards based on the Scriptures and natural law, these church leaders may not be intellectually equipped to counter the self-serving arguments of dictators.”

The churches’ approach to “peacemaking” is another explanation explored.

“Peacemaking and reconciliation,” the report says, have been major mainline themes for decades that often “have existed in an unacknowledged tension with the commitment of the denominations to human-rights advocacy.”

“The prevailing liberal view of peacemaking rests upon the presupposition that conflicts result more from misunderstandings than from real differences,” the report says. “Each side supposedly dehumanizes and ‘demonizes’ the other, and thus manufactures a conflict where none had to exist. According to this view, no nation has real enemies – only those it imagines to be its enemies and thus makes its enemies.”

Thus, the report says, the first step toward peacemaking is to call a halt to “demonization.”

“Consequently, if human rights have been a point of contention, they must not be discussed in a way that emphasizes differences or ‘demonizes’ a potential adversary.”

The underlying assumption is that as long as “dialogue” is occuring – even if there is little or no concrete progress – that conflict will be avoided.

The IRD also sees mainline churches framing situations in an ideological “template” of Western and American imperialism, which ignores anything that does not fit.

“Mainline church leaders see Israel as a bastion of Western imperialism, supported by U.S. funds and foreign policy,” the report says. “They see the Palestinians as the people oppressed by the policies of both Israel and the United States.”

When U.S. policy cannot be blamed, the mainline denominations seem less interested in speaking up for the victims, the IRD says.

Finally, the report broaches the possibility anti-Semitism colors the mainline churches’ view of human rights.

“We have shown that over one-third of the human rights criticisms from mainline Protestant denominations (or over one-half of the criticisms directed at foreign nations) are aimed at one nation – the only Jewish nation. Does this not suggest some kind of animus against the Jewish people?”

The IRD says it does not “assert that it is inherently anti-Semitic to criticize actions or policies of the state of Israel.”

While not explicitly stated by leaders, the IRD says it senses “whiffs of anti-Jewish animus”

“Most often it arises in private conversations,” the report says. “But we have heard occasional outbreaks of rhetoric borrowed from anti-Semitic sources. And we see alignments developing with movements elsewhere, in Europe and the Arab world, that are openly hostile to the Jewish people.”

The report concludes, “If the church is to avoid the necessity of yet another post hoc apology, it must make a commitment to defending human rights wherever they are at risk. The church must set aside its narrow and faulty ideology. It needs to broaden its scope and rediscover its moral authority in defense of the dignity of the human person. Only then will the church fully rise to the challenge it has set before itself in the realm of human rights advocacy.”